Brisbane floods 1974
4:10

Footage from the devastating 1974 Brisbane floods, showing the streets as rivers. Courtesy: Eric Gaehler and John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland

Courier Mail

10 Jan 2014

CM - QLD flood disaster

The 1974 flood took all of the Wemyss's possessions and forced them to live with family in North Queensland. But it also taught them the value of family and how to rise above disaster.

Debbie's photo on the front page of The Courier-Mail became an iconic image of the 1974 Flood, which claimed 14 lives and left thousands homeless. Debbie and her sister Karen, who was 8, remember only the excitement of the event and the face of their worried grandfather when they made it to safety.

"I don't remember the water at all but I remember looking up and seeing my grandfather and thinking, "Please, don't leave me," she said. The '74 flood remains the most exciting thing to ever happen to her.

Debbie, 44, and her mother Margaret, 67, now live in Mareeba. Margaret remembers the terror of walking alone, in rising waist-deep water, to get back to her home and children after a taxi dropped her at Royal Brisbane hospital.

She was lucky: co-workers at the telephone exchange in downtown Brisbane were trapped for days in the office building.

Debbie Wemyss, centre, was among children being ferried to safety on a makeshift rafter in Northey St, Windsor. This picture appeared on The Courier-Mail’s front page on Australia Day in 1974.Source: Supplied

"It took me two weeks to cry. You had to hold yourself together and get things done," she said.

The family's rental home was destroyed and later bulldozed. With all their clothes, furniture and household items gone, they loaded a car with donated clothes and $1200 government disaster payout and left Brisbane behind.

Margaret said the photograph captured the drama of the flood but not how close many people came to death. Power points were flooded with people still in their homes and even the raft picture didn't show how the men had to swim to get the children to safety.

Margaret and Debbie returned to their Brisbane neighbourhood in 1984, seeing that some houses survived on Northey St while theirs and others have been converted to park land.

"It was pretty exciting to see what the place was like," Debbie said. It wasn't a sad experience but did remind them how much they'd lost, including many of the photos of Debbie's childhood.

Karen, who lives in Ipswich today, also had difficulty remembering the rising water, but knew something exciting was happening.

"It was something new and different, something out of the ordinary, an adventure," she said. "It pretty much changed my entire life, it changed my school and my friends. But it's like any situation, there's good and bad in everything."

One vivid memory for Karen is receiving a beautiful purple dressing down that had been donated to for flood relief.

"I think it was because it was mine, it was given to me," she said. "It was absolutely gorgeous, it was shiny and royal purple. Purple is still my favourite colour."

She also remembers sitting on the suitcases in the sedan as the family drove north to Cairns to stay with her father's family until they rebuilt their lives.

Ironically Karen was in Goodna during the 2011 flood and in Ipswich during the most recent inundation of the Lockyer Valley.

Margaret said the speed of the 1974 flood was astounding, and she believes people are better protected today by the Wivenhoe Dam, better technology and warning devices.

"It is hard to believe it has been 40 years," she said. "It's just an event in life now."

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